We’re engaged! EEK! We have been hiding this surprise for a little over a week now so I couldn’t wait to blurt it out and give you all the news! It was important to us to take some time to enjoy the moment. We spent the last week chatting with friends and family about the proposal and taking it all in. We are over the moon with happiness and I get more and more excited about marrying Ethan by the day.
I want to share the details of the proposal with you all and I also want to use this blog post as a way to document the experience for us. I think it will be so fun to look back and read as time passes. So, I asked Ethan to write his side of the story on his own and then I am going to recount my feelings for you all too. 🙂
THROUGH ETHAN’S EYES:
Hi everyone! I don’t normally write much on the blog so it’s nice to break the fourth wall and share our engagement. I was SO nervous through this process, mostly because I didn’t want Linds to have any idea that I was planning to propose. Keeping this big of a secret from someone you normally share every little thing with is much harder than I expected it to be.
Starting from the beginning; I decided sometime around mid-January that I wanted to begin this process. First I had to call my parents and let them know I wanted to propose, they were SUPER excited and wanted to help in any way they could. I wanted the ring to hold sentimental value if possible so I asked my 91 year-old grandmother if she had any stones that she thought I could give to Lindsey – little did I know she was willing to give me her wedding ring that my grandfather gave to her in 1946 and she has worn since. Here is the ring before I reset the stones for Lindsey:
I was shocked she was willing to part with it but she knows how much it will mean handing it down through our family and Lindsey and I will cherish it for the rest of our lives. Now is the point where I get incredibly nervous for about a month straight. I kept the ring in the bottom of my socks drawer for at least a week or two before I had the appointment scheduled with the jeweler. My sister Emma had told me how great her jeweler has been to work with and is reasonable about pricing so I felt comfortable using him. Emma, who lives in Taiwan with her husband (long story for a different day), was in town for a few weeks in mid-February and we scheduled the time to go in together so she could introduce me to the jeweler and also help with my vision to create Lindsey’s ring. This all actually went really smoothly and I had the ring in my hands in just over a week. I picked up the ring while Linds was out of town in Austin recently for a bachelorette party so she was clueless as to what was going on.
That weekend I asked her Mom and Step-dad if they would have me in their family forever, their response was “We considered you part of the family already” which was awesome but we were all so happy that this will all finally be official after 3+ years of dating. They kept the ring in their safe at home from that point until the day of the proposal so that I didn’t have to hide it in the house with Lindsey. I called to ask her dad for her hand(in marriage) the Monday just before I proposed because I didn’t want him to have to keep the secret for long, we see him too often and I was scared we might blow the cover! Then came the hard part of trying to plan a proposal that felt special to Lindsey and I while also not tipping her off to any of it in the process. We both love a local Italian restaurant downtown so I wanted to do it there. I got a mid-week reservation and told Lindsey that “I wanted to use the rest of my birthday money on a nice dinner” so that she wasn’t wondering why I would plan a random expensive dinner. I arranged our parents (my mom and dad, her mom, dad and step dad) to wait in the parking lot that night and hold for my cue to surprise us just after I proposed to her, more on that later.
Now the day of the proposal my nerves are completely shot, I didn’t sleep a wink the night before. This wasn’t because I was worried necessarily it was more that I just wanted everything to go smoothly and for Lindsey to be completely surprised. I had to work all day which felt like the longest day of all-time. Lindsey’s step-dad stopped by around lunch to drop off the ring and then it was go time. I took a pit-stop at the restaurant on the way home to set up the table with flowers, mini white roses, Lindsey’s favorite. This will be the least shocking part of the story if you know us, we planned to take a full set blog photos for multiple outfits after work and before dinner so I had to somehow act natural during all of that while literally shooting the photos with her ring IN MY POCKET. We pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant around 7:10(7:15 reservation) and we took one more set of photos. This part to me is all kind of a blur because I was so nervous. I remember it was pretty windy, this is the blog that we used the photos for, I will certainly never forget that outfit. We then walked in and the hostess I had met earlier that day to setup flowers on the table greeted us and took us to the table. Linds was happy they sat us by the fireplace because it was cold outside. She wanted a picture standing beside it before we got settled at the table. Instead of taking a picture I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards me. She seemed confused. I said a few small things to her but the one I remember the most was “we make such an amazing team, I love you, I want to be on your team for the rest of our lives”. I had said that line over and over in my head the night before and thought that even if i was blacked out nervous as long as I could get that out I would be happy with everything. I then got on one knee and she was definitely in shock at this point, I asked her to marry me and from what I remember her answer was “Yes, definitely!”. We sat down just to catch our breath as both of us were kind of in shock and she just kept saying how weird it all was (in a good way….. I think haha). I told her it was about to get more weird and at that moment all of our family came around the corner and surprised her and we all celebrated. They may have been just as excited as we were! After that we celebrated with champagne and a delicious meal. It all went SO well and I really couldn’t be happier. I’m so excited to take you all along with us throughout the whole engagement process, but be ready it’s going to be a quick one!
LINDSEY’S POV:
He did good, right?? He pulled off the surprise 100% too, because I had NO clue. I knew we were at the point where we were both ready to get married. We’d talk about ‘in the future…’ ideas all the time. In the sense of–we’d like to rent out our house and get another place together sometime soon and we would love to go over seas for our honeymoon. But I had never asked Ethan anything about timeline. I always wanted him to come up with that completely on his own. So, did I expect to come home with a ring on my finger after a random Wednesday night dinner? No. Not at all. Mission accomplished, babe.
I would not change one thing about how he proposed. He came up with a perfect plan. I loved that we had the moment alone, that we got to celebrate with our parents immediately following, that I was caught off guard and that it was at our favorite place in Lex. The setting was so intimate. We were in a back room that we had completely to ourself by the fire place. It was cozy, happy and so special. I was in shock for a full 24 hours after (in a good way, ha)! We went over to my sisters house after we left the restaurant and I rang the doorbell and waived my ring at her. She started sobbing and Ethan started laughing and then we facetimed my brother and shared with him (he was on a college spring break trip). I called my granny later and she said she was so happy she was just “trembling”. It really was a magical night.
I cannot begin to tell you how honored I am to have such special stones in the ring either. It means the world to me that they were Ethan’s grandmas. Her allowing him to have those and me wear them on my finger is the greatest gift. The jeweler told us based on the way the diamond was cut it must have been done before 1919! I have always loved jewelry that has sentimental value and would rather wear something old than something brand new. The plain gold band you see me wearing all the time was my dad’s wedding band when he was married to my mom and the diamond band I wear was my mom’s guard ring. The black diamond earrings you see me wearing daily were a gift from my mom and step-dad on my 30th birthday. So you see, this diamond being old and having meaning is priceless. I feel like one lucky girl, to say the least. We plan to build a wedding band together with the remaining stones that you see in the photo above.
We are still looking at each other and saying ‘this is crazy’ with huge smiles on our face. We’re over the moon excited!
And now that the cat is out of the bag, there will be no more secrets around here because I plan on taking you all through all the wedding planning process with us! We have always talked about having a short engagement and things have already started to come together quickly! Stay tuned!
